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For free, a Swiss-cheese font that saves toner

I go to great lengths to avoid wasting paper: I try hard as I can not to print big documents and I’ve even mined old file drawers, to reclaim eight-year-old documents abandoned by long-gone colleagues so I can print on the clean side. Big IT players such as Xerox and HP are pushing advanced document management systems to help offices cut their printing costs, paper and toner use.

Now SPRANQ , a small font-design house in Utrecht, The Netherlands has joined the cause with a handsome solution that looks a little like Swiss cheese. Its new computer font, EcoFont, is riddled with tiny holes. When magnified, like the image above, the holes are visible. But when printed in standard document sizes, say 9 or 10 point, the holes can’t be seen. By not filling in zillions of these little voids, the company estimates its EcoFont saves about 20% of toner, extending the life of your cartridge, cutting costs, and reducing waste. The Ecofonts are available for free for both PC and Max, and work best for AppleWorks, MS Office 2007 and OpenOffice. Results are better on a high resolution laser printer than an ink jet. Learn more, and download the fonts at http://www.ecofont.eu/ecofont_en.html.